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First Mead Feedback

Hi everyone,

I am a homebrewer trying out mead making for the first time. Looking for some feedback on my first batch! My honey arrived a little early and I wasn't patient enough to wait for my GoFerm, fermaid O and fermaid K to arrive so I just moved forward standard yeast nutrient and DAP for my staggered additions.

Recipe and process:
22 lbs pumpkin honey
qs w/ water to 5.7 gallons (OG was 1.410)
Dissolved 12.5g yeast nutrient in warm water. Added 2 packets of 71B when water was 104F. Tempered with must 3x. Temp came down to 70F. Pitched into must which was ~74F, but I had a cool water bath ready. Within 1 hour temp was 63F.

Staggered nutrients: 4.3g yeast nutrient at 24hrs. I was leaving town at the 48 hour mark so I added 72 hr addition with my 48 hr addition and added 9g yeast nutrient and 3.7g DAP at 48 hrs.

I degassed every 12 hours except for a few days (day 3-5 since I was out of town)

I am currently day 7 and will add some more yeast nutrient and DAP (4.8g and 3.7g) and might take a gravity today or wait until tomorrow.

I was noticing some slightly cidery aroma coming off the must yesterday. Not sure if this is normal, or what typical aromas everyone else notices with 71B during fermentation.

Welcome, Hayden. I can't offer much in the way of feedback except to say everything looks good from what I can tell. I've never used pumpkin honey or 71B. At first I thought your nutrient additions were high, but then I realized that I've only ever made one gallon batches, so you're probably good in that respect too.

I would like to know more about what you're going for. Where did you get your pumpkin honey? Are you planning on making a dry traditional, sweet traditional, or blending with your homebrew beers for a braggot maybe?

So more likely than not. You wounded your yeast pretty badly when you rehydrated them in your nutrient. DAP is toxic during the rehydration process. When the cell membrane isn't established, it cannot control what passes in or out of their cell. When the cell wall is established, it can control what it allows in and out. When it's dry, and you put it in the rehydration slurry. Everything in the slurry goes inside the cell. So this allows us to gut load the proper nutrients inside the cell during this timeframe of a few seconds or so.

Unfortunately. DAP is toxic inside the cell. So you wounded them. Will they finish the batch? Maybe. Maybe not. Often this is why we see stalls in a ferment.

I would rehydrate more/new yeast once your Goferm gets in.

If you go to the gotmeadlive podcast. ANd start on 9/5/17. I start at the very front end and walk you through the entire process using the most modern protocols and nutrients. I promise you will be a much better mead maker in just a handful of hours than you ever could be with several years of experience.

Thanks for the info! Is there DAP in standard brewing yeast nutrient? I used that for rehydration and didnít add any DAP until later. Iíll be checking a gravity tonight and if Iím still lingering then Iíll pick up some extra yeast and use the go ferm. Iíll check out the podcast, thanks!